FEDERAL GUN LAWS INCREASE BY 17%

Alan Korwin sent me the following description of the new edition of his book:

"Assault-Weapon" Expiration Killed 4,800 words

by Alan Korwin, AuthorGun Laws of America

The tenth anniversary edition of "Gun Laws of America," the unabridged guide to federal gun law, shows both increases and decreases depending on how you count the laws, says Alan Korwin, publisher of Bloomfield Press, which has produced the book since 1995. The completely revised edition is due out in July.

"Some gun laws have been repealed, the assault-weapon law expired, and many new gun laws have been enacted by Congress," Korwin notes. "All told, we have 40 more statutes, for a total of 271 federal gun laws, a 17% increase in the past decade." That is the true measure, Korwin says.

The word count however has dropped slightly, by 979 words or about 1%, to a total of 93,354 words of federal gun law. The assault-weapon law expiration removed 1,105 words, but it also eliminated the 3,710-word list of "good guns," those declared to not be assault weapons. That list was included at the insistence of the NRA, who had feared the law might expand to include regular guns widely owned in America.

Among the significant repeals, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, formed during the Cold War, was abolished, with its primary functions rolled into the State Department. The Civilian Marksmanship Program, designed to teach the general public to shoot and handle firearms safely, was repealed from the Armed Services laws, and expanded and rewritten into the Patriotic Societies laws.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was removed from the Treasury Dept., where it had been a tax bureau since its inception, and now operates under the Attorney General, with Explosives added to its name and an implicit Justice Dept. law-enforcement focus.

The most dramatic word losses occurred during "codification," a little-known process managed behind the scenes by federal workers. This takes bills passed by Congress and converts them into the numbered statutes of law called U.S. Code. For example, Congress enacted 39 words to extend the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act, which was about to expire. After codification, the statute simply expires in "25 years," not "15 years," a significant change but with no difference in the word count. Earlier measurements of the size of federal law included the congressionally passed laws.

Surprisingly, some parts of congressional acts are never codified at all. This also lowers the final word counts. Those so-called "statutes-at-large," if related to arms, are included in Gun Laws of America as an appendix. They are not counted in the official statutory total, but do contain another 4,354 words of federal gun law.

The large repeal, expiration and codification losses were offset by scores of new gun laws. Many were enacted with no public attention and little noise from usually loud pro-gun-rights and anti-gun-rights lobbies. Some new gun laws, instead of affecting citizens, expanded federal powers.

For example, at least six new federal police forces were created, with broad powers to keep and bear arms in cases where the public is banned from keeping arms. This includes a new Federal Reserve Board police force, the Inspectors General police, plus more visible changes such as Homeland Security forces and armed Transportation Security agents. Two armed-pilot programs, for passenger and cargo pilots, allow pilots to be deputized as federal agents and then carry arms while deputized (pilots per se cannot be armed under the law).

6/17/2005

A friend of freedom of speech resigns

John Fund, in his political journal diary, says it very well:

The first amendment took a big hit on Wednesday when Bradley Smith resigned as member of the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Smith was arguably the biggest hawk for protecting political speech in the history of the commission, which regulates political and campaign activities. He made all sorts of enemies, especially among liberal activists who believe that the right to free speech doesn't include the right to spend money promoting your views.

It speaks volumes that arguably the happiest person in America to see him go is Senator John McCain. Mr. McCain is on a mission to regulate away virtually all private political spending. Ever since he was caught in an embarrassing financial relationship with a disgraced savings & loan owner, he's adopted the view that political giving is inherently corrupt and corrupting.

This is not a good time for Mr. Smith to be leaving. Several monumentally important First Amendment issues will be decided in the new few years, including regulation of Internet political activities. Mr. McCain also wants to ban the independent spending of "527" groups, which was a direct outgrowth of his previous effort to ban large contributions to the political parties. Mr. Smith told me recently: "The right to political free speech in America has pretty much reached the end of its tethers." Even the usual defenders of civil liberties, he added, had abandoned their principles because "their hostility to money overrides their concern about the First Amendment." . . .

Brad is a friend, and I just happened to bump into him on Wednesday evening at a get together for the Federalist Society. He is going back to Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.

New Gallup Poll on Guns

In a new poll (6/14/05) entitled "Public Wary About Broad Concealed Firearm Privileges," Gallup asks "Who Should be Allowed to Carry Concealed handguns?" and finds that 26 percent support letting private citizens with a "clear need" carrying guns and 27 percent support "any private citizen." The wording of this question is crucial, and that neither of these options corresponds to actual rules under right-to-carry laws. My experience in reading these polls is that you get much higher numbers when you include information such as "those who have passed a criminal background check" and/or "passed training requirements." When many people hear the term "any private citizen" they become concerned that this would allow criminals to carry concealed handguns. My own belief is that Gallup survey is not worth very much other than for its propoganda value, though it is interesting to me that 53 percent (26 + 27 percent) believe that citizens should be able to carry a gun without any mention of criminal background checks or training. 43 percent of guns owners and 17 percent of nongun owners think that any private citizen should be able to carry a gun. (You need to subscribe to Gallup to download the information in this survey.)

I confess that I have never understood the opposition to letting retired police carrying guns. Many Democrats find this troubling, and I don't understand why they view this as so dangerous. Right-to-carry laws generally reduce crime, and whatever unfounded fears they have about that seem even more difficult to justify with these people. The only explanation that I have heard is the type of reason given by Democrats in Illinois and that is a "slippery slope" argument. If you let retired police carry guns today, tomorrow it will be everyone. I view it in reverse. If there are no problems with citizens carrying guns, how can there be with retired or off-duty police.

I thank Jason Morin for letting me know about this. Jason also correctly points out that with all the debate in Florida about their new castle doctrine law, Louisiana has had for some years this similar law for dealing with carjackings.

If Canada's criminals registered their firearms, and deadly weapons smuggled from the United States were similarly registered, the billion dollars spent on Canada's firearms registry might seem like a wise investment.

But criminals don't register their firearms and the registry, despite what its proponents claim, has not made for safer communities. The program, which was only supposed to cost taxpayers $2 million when it was introduced in 1995, hasn't taken guns away from criminals or removed them from city streets.

Last week, Windsor police seized a .357 handgun during a drug raid on a home in the 500 block of Janette Avenue. That weapon had been reported stolen from the United States and wasn't registered in Canada. Nor were the 10 semi-automatic weapons police took off the streets in late April. Those non-registered firearms included one with a laser-sight and a Tec-9 machine pistol with a 30-round clip. Good police work, not the useless registry, netted those guns.

The .22 calibre Beretta that Jack Pharr used to gun down 22-year-old Brian Bolyantu in downtown Windsor wasn't to be found in Canada's gun registry and neither was the .357 Magnum that Kenyatta Watts used to kill Mohammed Charafeddine. People like Pharr and Watts don't register their weapons.

The only people who register their firearms are law-abiding citizens who are being unfairly targeted by an ill-conceived program designed to score votes in urban Canada at the expense of rural residents.

How does forcing an Essex County hunter to register his rifle make downtown Windsor safe from gunplay? It doesn't and it never will no matter how much money the government pours down the black hole of the gun registry. . . .